Entry three: Thoreau

January 16, 2012

How appropriate to be reading Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” on Martin Luther King Day.

To be perfectly honest, reading Thoreau was not my cup of tea. More of a struggle than reading Emerson. Possibly because his writing style didn’t appeal to me, like Emerson’s did. I did notice similar themes between their writings though. A focus on the individual, the second self. The burden of slavery, especially so in the Thoreau. He addresses the issue more directly than Emerson. The bit about Thoreau’s night in prison was interesting. Especially in the context of Emerson’s ideas about the second self. Thoreau comments on how it is foolish of an institution to treat an individual as if he was mere flesh and blood and bone, able to be locked up. He later comments that the State only confronts a person’s physical body and never threatens his or her intellectual and moral sense. Suggesting a sort of doubleness… the conscious physical being and the inner being. Is civil disobedience easy then? Because the state can only inflict our physical self? Thoreau seems to believe in action. There’s no point in holding an opinion but not acting on it. This reminded me of the current push for fair trade. It’s all good and well to say you disagree with slave made products but what’s the good of believing that unless you act and stop buying slave made products?

I had an interesting time with the selections from Walden. Full of verbalized interjections and furrowed eyebrows of confusion. I was quite interested in his philosophy and generalizations. But I really could not care about how much to cost to build his house or how much he spent on oil. What was his purpose in including that? I think that I need some context to Walden. Was it to show how he was living counter-culturally? It might have helped if I knew the costs of building houses and food, etc. during his time period. And the value of the dollar. I suppose I could look that up. I liked the bit about old and new clothes. Also, this was very interesting: “I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one.” At a first quick glance, this sentence made me want to chuck this book across the room. What? Aren’t you just contradicting everything you just said? Then I realized that he’s trying to say that when the grander houses are equal to the house he built in price and pleasure then he will build one. The likelihood of this happening is nil though. But still, why? If a grander house is equal to the one you’ve built, then why does it matter which one you’re living in? Am just confusing myself now.

As student, I was very much intrigued by his passage on tuition and what you learn at college: “I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end.” Even as a student, I feel like this sometimes. Like I’m just spinning my wheels here. In a bubble. Not really living. To live is to be awake.

Thoreau seems to be against acts of charity because so often they are single act… “goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which is he unconscious…” Like not letting your left hand see what your right is doing…